Saturday, 5 January 2013

Rethinking Adam and Eve Today

Just back from a break in Yorkshire, here's a piece that was published in the Church of England Newspaper just before Christmas. They offer 'turns' to various evangelical organizations, and this particular time it was Reform's go.

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Rethinking Adam and Eve Today

One issue raised by the defeat
of the Measure to introduce women bishops is the need for
evangelicals to think more carefully about the Genesis account of
Adam and Eve, and particularly
the situation before and after the fall.

In a 1975 article (‘What is the
Woman’s Desire?’, Westminster Theological Journal, 37:376-83),
Susan T Foh explicitly rejected the suggestion that ‘before the
fall, man and woman were
equal and that neither ruled’ (378). Yet for many evangelicals
today, that is precisely the view to
which they adhere, with the accompanying belief that the gospel
restores relationships between
men and women, both in the home and the Church, to this pristine
condition.

Over against this ‘equality
without rule’ is then set ‘hierarchy’ with all its negative
connotations.
‘There is no hierarchy between the sexes,’ we are told, ‘in
Genesis 2.’

And of course literally that is
true: there is no ‘priestly rule’ of one person over another. But
is it
fair to say that there was a simple interchangeability? Certainly
the Apostle Paul does not seem to
think so. Rather, he detects what we might call a ‘non-reversible
asymmetry’: ‘For man did not
come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for
woman, but woman for
man’ (1 Cor 11:8-9, NIV).

Identical twins would be both
symmetrical and reversible. You could swap one for the other and
it
would make no difference. Adam and Eve, however, are
‘asymmetrical’ (he is a man, she is a
woman) and their relationship one to the other is not
‘reversible’.

Careful thought, furthermore,
suggests a number of consequences to this. For example, Adam is
older than Eve and has already experienced things she has not.
Hence we may presume that he
would have shown her round the Garden, rather than the reverse,
that he would have informed her
of God’s mandate and command, to which she would have listened,
and so on. Similarly, Adam
named the animals on his own authority, whereas Eve would have
used the names he had given.

More fundamentally, as the
Apostle indicates, Eve’s very life derives from Adam’s. In the
beginning, nephesh (living being) came from the substance
of the ground. Adam is nephesh from
aphar (dust), the animals are nephesh from adamah
(ground). Eve, however, is uniquely nephesh
from the nephesh of Adam. He is the source of her
life, not the other way round. And as the
Apostle observes, she is made ‘for’ him, not he for her.

All these factors suggest (at
very least) that Adam would have exercised an initial lead which
Eve
would have followed. And whilst a fallen creature might indeed use
this as an excuse for
domineering, would not Adam have loved Eve by showing her how she
would become his ezer, or
‘strengthener’ (2:18)?

Non-reversible asymmetry
therefore need not be pernicious. Indeed it is what we find in the
Trinity, where each of the ‘asymmetrical’ persons has a
‘non-reversible’ relationship with the
others.

But the Apostle also reminds us
(Ephesians 5:31-32), that just as Genesis 3 contains the
proto-gospel (3:15), so Genesis 2 contains a proto-ecclesiology
(2:24), for Adam and Eve’s ‘non-reversible asymmetry’ reflects
that of Christ and the Church. And this has two further
implications.

The first is that the
non-reversible asymmetry of husband and wife indeed has
implications for
relationships in the household of God (eg Eph 5:21,33 cf 1 Tim
3:2-5). The second (suggested by J V Fesko,
Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Westminster
Seminary) is that we should adopt a
‘Christological’ reading of Genesis 1-3 as a whole. And that will
be increasingly important in the
coming debate about gender and sexuality.

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UPDATE: "Genesis 3 contains the
proto-gospel" should be followed with (3:15) NOT (3:16) as originally posted.

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